Happy Holidays from RAMS

Wishing you a Healthy and Happy Holiday Season

From all of us at RAMS

 

Inaugural 2013 Staff Awards for Outstanding Service

RAMS is pleased to announce the first annual Awards for Outstanding Service. There will be three individuals that will be honored in the following ways…

• Consumer/Community Advocate Award: This award honors an individual who has been an outstanding voice for consumer empowerment by promoting client centered decision-making & change, access to information & resources, and creating relationships that foster hope, safety, and a sense of self-efficacy. S/he is mindful not only of consumer needs, but also of the needs of the larger community. S/he goes above and beyond the “call of duty”, outside her/his regular responsibilities to advocate on the behalf of the organization, consumers, their communities, and the “cause” at large.

• Excellence in Service & Cultural Competency Award: This award honors a skilled & compassionate individual who exemplifies the values and ideals of RAMS’ mission in her/his work & interaction with staff, consumers, and the community. S/he has given superior, sustained commitment to quality services, along with unwavering dedication to serve the organization (including other staff, consumers & their communities) with professionalism, integrity, respect, and humility. This individual is not only skilled at what s/he does, but also values diversity, is able to conduct self-assessments, manage & embrace the dynamics of difference, acquire new cultural knowledge, and adapt to the cultural context of the people s/he serves. S/he has a lasting positive impact on the organization and the communities.

• Rising Star/Leadership Award: The award honors an individual that has shown exceptional promise in leadership by demonstrating their skills within the organization and our communities. S/he has shown accomplishments in improving the operations of a program, the administrative/supportive functions, and/or the lives of consumers and community we serve using an effective and efficient approach. This individual leads the way with fresh energy, strong ability, and steadfast commitment.

To be considered for this recognition, anyone working at RAMS may self-nominate or be nominated by anyone else within the agency. A committee representing staff and management personnel will review all nomination submissions and notify the final award recipients. All nominations will be collected in January with awards being presented in 2013 at a RAMS event. Each recipient also receives $1,000.

RAMS is excited to be able to have this annual recognition for staff, and will be making the announcement early next year!

Meet RAMS - Alison Ching, LMFT and Yuka Hachiuma, LMFT

On October 30, 2012, in celebration of Mental Health Awareness Week, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors commended individuals in each supervisorial district for their work in the mental health field. We are proud to announce that Supervisor Eric Mar awarded RAMS counselors Alison Ching, LMFT and Yuka Hachiuma, LMFT with Certificates of Honor as the individuals representing the Richmond District of San Francisco.

Here’s why:

Alison Ching, MA, Ed.M., MFT is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with over 15 years of experience in the human services field. Beginning as a Research Assistant Intern for one of the first U.S. studies on HIV and substance use in Asian American populations, Ms. Ching has since worked with a range of culturally diverse communities of children, youth, and families providing clinical assessment, psychotherapy, and health education. She has been working at RAMS, since 2006, as a Behavioral Health Counselor for teens and families providing culturally competent assessment, therapy, and crisis intervention services for students on-site at Washington High School and Lincoln High School (and previously Burton High School) through the Wellness Initiative. She exhibits passion and dedication to working with culturally diverse youth and families, while demonstrating tireless advocacy and providing effective client-centered mental health services.

Yuka Hachiuma, MS, MFT is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with 10 years of experience in the mental health field. A bicultural, bilingual Japanese-speaking therapist, Ms. Hachiuma works at RAMS as a Mental Health Counselor providing culturally competent counseling to youth and their families, on-site at Washington High School. Specifically, she serves students & families with limited resources and youth receiving special education services while providing consultation to school faculty and administrators. While at RAMS, Ms. Hachiuma previously served as the first Coordinator for the agency’s launch of the Summer Bridge program, a summer mentoring program for San Francisco high school students designed to promote awareness of psychological well-being and foster interest in the helping professions. She continuously exhibits unwavering commitment to serving the diverse San Francisco community of children and youth, while modeling and inspiring compassionate & quality mental health care in the field.

Please join RAMS in congratulating Alison and Yuka for this commendation, and in celebrating all the honorees of the various San Francisco districts!

The San Francisco Wellness Initiative

If you'd like to read more about how the Wellness Centers program is structured, the San Francisco Wellness Initiative website is a great place to start.

The mission of the SF Wellness Initiative is to improve the health, well-being, and educational outcomes of San Francisco Unified School District high school students.  RAMS, Inc. is the core provider of behavioral health services for the Wellness Initiative. 

Check out the latest videos (featuring RAMS staff!) from the San Francisco Wellness Initiative YouTube page to learn more about how San Francisco collaborates to support the health of our adolescents.

2012-2013 Interns and Trainees off to a Great Start!

True to RAMS commitment to fostering the next generation of culturally competent clinicians, each year the agency offers a variety of internship placements.  This year, RAMS has about 30 new interns and trainees possessing a vast range of skills and knowledge, languages spoken, educational backgrounds, and disciplines who are serving the client community in seven of RAMS programs – Asian Family Institute; Adult/Older Adult Outpatient Services Clinic; Broderick Street Adult Residential Facility; Child, Youth & Family Outpatient Services Clinic; Fu Yau Project; PAES Counseling & Pre-Vocational Services; and Wellness Centers Program.  The interns and trainees have undergone an orientation and training process in September with seminars ranging from working with children & families and adult/older adults, to confidentiality & privacy policies, mandatory reporting requirements, response to crisis and suicide intervention, cultural humility and competency principles, engagement, and strategies…and so much more!  Now that the majority of “orienting” is done, RAMS is looking towards the next phase of applying theory and clinical knowledge into practice, fostering professional growth and development through supervision and ongoing trainings and seminars, and offering enriching experiences in community mental health settings.

RAMS aims to recruit a diverse group and, for academic year 2012/13, the agency did just that!  The intern and trainee group represents graduate programs of over 10 schools – California Institute of Integral Studies; Alliant International University/California School of Professional Psychology; Georgia State University; San Francisco State University; Smith College; University of California, San Francisco; and The Wright Institute, just to name a few.  And, to reflect the diverse languages of the client community, over 15 languages can be spoken by the group including Cantonese, Hindi, Korean, Mandarin, Malay, Mongolian, Russian, Spanish, and many more.  The interns and trainees also come to RAMS in different stages of their educational training with majority currently in their masters programs while others are pre-doctoral interns (RAMS National Asian American Psychology Training Center has been continuously accredited by the American Psychological Association since 1980), post-doctoral fellows, and post-masters interns in various healthcare disciplines – Psychology; Marriage & Family Therapy; Nursing; and Social Work.  RAMS even has different training focuses such as clinical and research.

RAMS actively retains high quality licensed clinicians to provide clinical supervision to the interns and trainees (many who are former RAMS interns and/or trainees themselves).  The agency is truly privileged to be able to be part of the group’s journey through the helping profession – for over 35 years, the agency has had this honor for many in the field and looks forward to continuing this tradition.


Pre-Doctoral Interns, Interns, and Practicum Trainees at RAMS

There are interns and trainees at almost every RAMS program, and although we are not able to include everyone's pictures, we are delighted to have ALL of them here contributing their skills and talents to RAMS! 

Stereotype Threat: How it affects us and what we can do

RAMS is honored to have distinguished speaker Claude Steele, PhD, as our featured presenter for the 7th Annual Evelyn Lee Diversity and Cultural Competency Training on October 11.

This seminar will focus on the theory of stereotype threat, designating a common process through which people from different groups, being threatened by different stereotypes, can have different experiences in the same situation. It will illustrate its application in understanding group differences in performance ranging from the intellectual to the athletic, in a variety of settings such as the workplace and academia. The psychological experience of the individual and, particularly, on the experience of threats to the self and the consequences of those threats will also be discussed along with the concepts of self-image threat, self-affirmation, and its role in self-regulation, the academic under-achievement of minority students, and the role of alcohol and drug use in self-regulation processes and social behavior. Furthermore, the seminar will reveal interventions and strategies, from a community service provider perspective.

When: Thursday, October 11.  9:00am - 12:00pm (Registration 8:30am)
Where: Balboa Theater, 3630 Balboa Street, San Francisco (Next door to RAMS)

Dr. Steele is a renowned social psychologist who is currently the I. James Quillen Dean for the School of Education at Stanford University. Previously, he served as the 21st Provost of Columbia University, as well as a professor of psychology. He is best known for his work on stereotype threat and its application to minority student academic performance. His earlier research focused on the self (e.g. self-image, self-affirmation) as well as the role of self-regulation in addictive behaviors. Dr. Steele has also published articles in numerous scholarly journals and his recent book, Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do, was published in 2010.

Trauma/Grief and Loss Counseling Services through the San Francisco high school-based Wellness Centers

RAMS, Inc. has had over a decade of partnership with the San Francisco Wellness Initiative, a collaboration between the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), SF Department of Public Health / Community Behavioral Health Services (SFDPH-CBHS), and Department of Children Youth and Families (DCYF). The Wellness Initiative has established Wellness Centers in, currently, 16 of the public high schools in San Francisco. The Wellness Centers provide free, on-site, confidential health services to students including behavioral health counseling, nursing services, support and empowerment groups, and connections to health resources in the community. RAMS, specifically, is the core behavioral health services provider  with on-site counselors/therapists, clinical case managers, and an intern training program that recruits graduate students annually, to provide support  to over 1,500 students a year.  Over the course of our work, they have experienced a high volume of students regularly affected by frequent acts of community violence that occur several times (sometimes more) a year.  Each violent act simultaneously affects bands of students at several high schools at once and the volume of the problem outweighs the capacity of the Wellness Centers’ staff.  In response to this need, the Trauma/Grief & Loss Counselor (TGL) position was proposed by RAMS and funded through the Mental Health Services Act (MHSA) / SFDPH-CBHS in 2009.  The TGL Counselor is integrated, and is available to all 16  Wellness Centers and provides immediate response to and intervenes in schools when students or faculty are affected by school-wide crises, such as neighborhood violence or deaths of students and teachers.  The TGL Counselor provides debriefing, de-escalation, training, and short and long term group therapy. The TGL Counselor possesses a Master’s degree (mental health field), is bilingual & bicultural, and has clinical expertise in working with adolescents and trauma/grief & loss issues. 

Students are recruited for Trauma/Grief & Loss services in several ways. Following an incident of community violence or other tragedy (i.e. suicide or death of teachers) there is subsequent debriefing and containment at a school(s), after which students may directly agree to on-going group support.  The Wellness Center staff also may identify students who have been referred to them by teachers or academic counselors; and have exhibited symptoms of trauma; or have admitted some experience with being victims or witness to violence.  Staff will request TGL group services for these students. TGL services average about six groups per semester.

The curriculum for the Trauma/Grief and Loss groups is a combination of Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (Cohen, Mannarino, & Deblinger, 2006) and the Seeking Safety models (Najavits, 2007).  Both models are present-focused and components-based and aim to help group members learn new skills to cope with and manage symptoms of trauma.  Both have evidence that support their efficacy.

For the 2011-12 school year, the TGL Counselor provided services to 90 students and facilitated 11 groups at nine school sites.  The participant demographics were: 51% Latino, 25% African American, with the remaining being Filipino, Multi-racial, Caucasian and Other.  Approximately 70% of the youth had recently experienced the death of a family member or someone close to them while others had issues relating to immigration or other trauma (i.e. suicide or domestic violence).   

To evaluate the effectiveness of the services, students are administered a pre- and post-test during their participation,  based on the Child PTSD Symptom Scale (CPSS) (Foa, et al.,2001) which measures their level of PTSD symptomology on a 1- 51 scale.  Students rating over 15 are considered to be above the clinical PTSD range.  The Wellness Initiative’s research partner, ETR (Evaluation, Training, Research) Associates collects the test data and reports annually on the outcomes. Consistently, the results have been promising.  In the 2011-12 group evaluation survey, 100% of the participants reported a decrease in their PTSD symptoms with an average 16-point drop.  Furthermore, 92% of group participants, at intake, were above the PTSD range; at the end of the group, only 44% of these students measured above the PTSD range.   

It is these hopeful outcomes that support our commitment to serving San Francisco’s youth in the Wellness Centers.  RAMS continues to solicit feedback from students about services to identify and further strengthen culturally competent, consumer-driven programming and how to effectively support youth experiencing trauma symptoms.
Photo credit - by FotoRita on Flickr